


Shower Boyfriends

by paintedrecs



Series: Painted Landscapes (tumblr fics) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - College/University, College Student Derek, College Student Stiles, Deputy Stiles Stilinski (future), Derek Feels, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Derek Hale, Pen Pals AU, Professor Derek Hale (future)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7671163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek likes sticking to his routines: they give his days structure and keep his goals on track. His carefully maintained habits have never been more important than at college, and by his second year, he's gotten everything exactly the way he wants it. He has the ideal roommate, the best dorm on campus, and a fascinating set of classes in a schedule that lets him sleep in.</p><p>But when mysterious messages start appearing on his dorm's shower wall, Derek can't seem to resist searching for answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shower Boyfriends

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/148394152585/shower-boyfriends), and inspired by the fact that I always seem to come up with my best lines while I'm in the shower, then kick myself because I've forgotten half of them by the time I've gotten out and toweled my hair dry.

Derek’s always been a force-of-habit kind of guy. When he was little, this meant having the same breakfast every morning: Cheerios, two spoonfuls of Laura’s Honey Nut mixed in for flavor, and a perfectly ripe banana sliced on top before the milk was poured in. The milk would _preferably_ be 2%, although he did accept 1% when they ran out and his mom was too tired to drive to the store. 

When he was a teenager getting used to the new dynamics in high school, he volunteered to make shopping runs, and carried his habits over to his lunches. He carefully assembled his sandwiches each night, since he would’ve had to get up at the crack of dawn to avoid the jostling - and attempts to sneak extra treats into his lunchbag - that would inevitably happen once his mom and sisters were in the kitchen. Derek had never been much of a morning person.

That didn’t change in college, even when he got stuck with 8 AM classes his freshman year, rolling bleary-eyed out of bed to the shower and then down the hill to the history building, eating a banana or a granola bar on the way. 

By his second year, he’s ironed out a new routine. He’s arranged his classes for the afternoons and evenings, and talked the housing office into letting him and Boyd keep their room. He’s gotten used to the showers - they’re some of the better ones on campus, according to friends who live in buildings with shittier rooms but nicer views or more convenient access to the student union. He’s lucked out, too, with the laundry room, which is newly renovated, thanks to a guy named Greenberg who’d had some sort of mental breakdown two years earlier, deciding to express his existential despair by systematically flooding all the washing machines and then trying to light his books on fire in the dryers.

And Boyd’s a pretty great roommate, as they go. Derek had worried a little about sharing a room with someone - it’d taken some trips to the hardware store and two rows of slide-locks to keep his nosy sisters out of his room - but Boyd’s on the quieter side, respecting Derek’s space and demonstrating a subtle, wry sort of humor that Derek appreciates.

Derek’s carefully mapped out schedule includes waking up a couple hours after Boyd, getting in some reading and finishing up homework assignments, if necessary, or spending that time working out if he’s all caught up, then slipping into a towel and his shower shoes and padding down the hall to what he’s come to think of as _his_  stall. 

He’s always there at roughly the same time of day - that sweet spot between morning and afternoon classes, when most of his floor’s already cleared out, or scrambling to grab lunch before running to their lecture halls. The bathroom’s on the larger end, with a line of tiled, curtained off showers and a row of chrome sinks bolted to the opposite wall. He prefers the stall at the far end of the room; it tends to stay cleaner for longer, probably because the other guys are generally too lazy to walk the few extra steps from the door.

That trend had held true for most of his first year, anyway. The part of Derek that’s always thrown off-kilter by changes should’ve expected something to shove a wrench into his plans.

Despite the luxury of a mostly-empty bathroom, Derek doesn’t tend to linger in the shower. He usually scrubs himself down, wraps up in a towel - a soft, fluffy pink one, because he’d fallen for Cora’s innocent-faced “but I wanna give my favorite big brother a graduation present” trickery; the joke’s on her, since it’s the nicest towel he’s ever owned - and gets back to his studies. 

At some point, though, he starts noticing strange bits of one-sided dialogue appearing on the tiles in his stall. It’s a couple words the first time, scribbled in some type of bathtub crayon, judging from his childhood memories, as though the guy had been in the middle of an essay or a conversation when he’d had to dash to the shower.

He’s irritated at first. He rubs a thumb against a half-erased word, wondering who the asshole is who doesn’t wipe the stall down when he’s done. He’s probably the kind of guy who lets his laundry build up in a festering pile in his room, until the stench of sweaty socks and crusty underwear drives his roommate into cranking open the window and tossing all his clothes out on the lawn.

(That incident had happened to someone in Isaac’s building last year. Derek had found it both hilarious and disgusting, and on his next trip to the dining hall, he’d picked up an extra slice of cheesecake as a silent thanks to Boyd.)

The point is, this guy is irritating, and Derek heads back to his room in a sour mood, hoping that he’ll choose a different stall the next time, or keep his thoughts to himself, like a normal person.

But, despite himself, he starts getting intrigued. Because Mystery Shower Guy does come back, leaving new messages nearly every day. They’re at his eye level, maybe a fraction above, so the guy must be around his height. And they’re always fragments of thoughts, phrases that’d probably fit midway through an essay, bits of debates, hints of arguments he’d been having in class, or with a friend, or maybe even with a parent.

Sometimes the writing makes Derek crack a smile, or sets his fingers itching with the urge to argue back. _That’s a flawed premise_ , he finds himself hissing one afternoon, then holds his breath and listens until he’s sure the bathroom’s still empty. 

He doesn’t want to gain a reputation as the weirdo who talks to himself in the showers; he’d gotten enough shit in high school about the smallest things, like the fact that he liked sitting with his sisters at lunch (Laura, then Cora, older and younger by two years each, and always an important part of his life). College is a new start. He can be a new person here. A cool person, maybe. He hasn’t exactly _tried_ to shape himself into that person yet, but no one knows he _isn’t_ , yet.

He starts lingering a little longer, hanging out in the bathroom to fix his hair in front of the mirrors and check out who’s on his floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mystery Shower Guy, as though something inside him will sing out in recognition the moment their eyes meet.

(The bathroom-lingering gets creepy pretty fast. He stops doing that.)

The next logical step, as though any of this has been remotely logical thus far, is to run some errands and casually pick up some water-resistant supplies of his own. The only thing he _knows_  they have in common is their dedication to personal cleanliness, which means that has to be the starting point in their communication. 

He wakes up extra early the next morning, dragging himself reluctantly out of bed, groaning an apology at Boyd, who’d wrapped his pillow around his head the third time Derek’s alarm had gone off. He stumbles into the shower, feeling shaky and a little sick to his stomach - from nerves, which is stupid, but also from being up _way too fucking early_. 

He stands under the hot water for longer than usual, falling asleep at least once, but managing not to drown in the spray. Finally, his brain’s alert and active enough to shape the first words he’ll ever say to his shower buddy.

 _You have interesting ideas_ , he scrawls out in orange crayon. _Philosophy major? Debate team? Or just a guy with way too much time on his hands?_

He returns to his room, whistling softly and feeling pleased about his message, hoping the Mystery Guy will see it.

Hours later, midway through his Russian History & Literature course, which ordinarily holds 100% of his attention, he stiffens in his seat and starts up a panicked internal monologue. 

That was a _terrible idea._ Why did he do that? What the _fuck_  was he thinking?

He manages to stay in his desk through the end of the lecture, but instead of hanging around to engage in further discussion with his professor, he gathers up his books and bolts back up the hill to his dorm. He stops to toss his things on his bed, then flees to the bathroom. 

“I warned you about the meatloaf surprise,” he hears Whittemore call after him, but he ignores both him and the pretty redhead he’s chatting up and flings himself down the hallway, ripping back the curtain of the last stall.

As he does so, he realizes he hadn’t even paused to check whether it was occupied, but he’s lucky: in one aspect, anyway. Because the guy’s already been there and has written back, in a bright, inviting blue.

 _I keep my hands plenty busy_ , the familiar handwriting says. _Maybe you’re the one who’s hard up here, dude. But color me intrigued: I’ll tell you my major if you tell me yours._

Derek sags against the wall in relief, then grimaces and straightens, rubbing at the wet spot on his shoulder. His heart’s still beating wildly, his breathing more ragged than it should be, but it doesn’t seem like he’s screwed anything up too badly. And he _wants_  to write back. He can’t explain it, but he wants to know more.

***

Their communication progresses rapidly after that, messages flowing back and forth in an oddly personal-yet-public shorthand that they develop as they go along. It’s an unusual kind of pen pal relationship that frankly makes no sense to be engaging in, but neither of them seems inclined to stop, or to move it to something more concrete. Derek considers it a few times - even writes his name and room number on the tiles once, turns his back to it and scrubs roughly at his hair, then thinks better of it and wipes the invitation away.

Mystery Guy might be disappointed by the reality, he thinks. Or _he_  might be; there’s always the possibility it’s someone in Whittemore’s douche-circle, or someone who manages to spill momentarily clever thoughts in the shower, but who can’t hold an equally compelling conversation in real-time.

It’s better to keep things as they are, he decides. It’s strange, but it works for them. It gives Derek something to look forward to, even if it’s something he hasn’t been able to bring himself to tell anyone else about. So they keep talking, day after day, getting to know each other in pieces, their language carefully guarded on both sides, but open enough to let Derek know Mystery Guy enjoys their system as much as he does.

One of the trickiest elements is that the showers get cleaned every night, so Derek can’t leave a message after his classes and expect it to still be visible when Mystery Guy shows up. He feels a little guilty, anyway, about adding more work to the janitorial staff’s already heavy load (it _is_  a dorm filled with college boys, after all), so he makes sure to wipe the tiles clean as soon as he’s read his shower buddy’s reply, leaving the slate clear for the next day.

Since Derek’s the one who started this whole thing, and probably the one who’s far more invested in maintaining it, he takes it upon himself to figure out a schedule that will allow them to continue their exchanges. He doesn’t know when Mystery Guy showers, or if he’s even that consistent with his timing, so the only way for Derek to ensure he gets there first is to wake up as early as he can manage. 

It’s not easy. He ends up falling asleep in class a few times, resulting in awkward conversations with professors who’d gotten used to his attentive note-taking and ability to steer class discussions along thoughtful, productive paths.

“I’m not burning out,” he assures them, their lips thinning in worry as he sways unconvincingly in place. “I’m a little tired, that’s all, but I’ll do better. I’m sorry I missed part of the lecture; can I come by during office hours to catch up?”

Some days, when he slips back into the bathroom after he’s done for the day, there’s no message waiting for him. It sends a jolt of disappointment through him, anxiety lingering through the rest of the night, as he wonders if he’d missed it, if an important message had gotten washed away, or if Mystery Guy had finally gotten tired of writing back.

Most of the time, though, the words are waiting for him, and he takes his time tracing the loops of the letters, wondering what the guy had been thinking as he wrote. Dwelling, occasionally, briefly, on thoughts of what the guy might look like. If he’s handsome. If he even swings that way. If he’s already dating someone else. If he ever thinks about Derek, outside of those few minutes in the shower, when he pauses to write back.

***

Derek’s hurrying back for one of his afternoon stall-checks, already reaching for the curtain, when he bumps into another student. The guy’s leanly muscled, with broad shoulders, dark eyes, and moles that unexpectedly pull the phrase “beauty marks” to mind. He’s attractive, Derek notes absently, his gaze pulled down the guy’s long throat to his defined chest with its appealing smattering of hair, and along the trail of darker hair leading into his towel.

But it’s only a momentary flare of attraction, an indulgence Derek can’t afford, because the guy’s heading into Mystery Guy’s stall. It’s Wednesday, the night Derek has a three hour seminar that ends after the janitorial staff has already made its rounds. He’s already running late, and if he doesn’t check now, he won’t get another chance.

He tries to shoulder his way in; his impatience and anxiety makes him rough and ruder than he’d ordinarily be when meeting someone for the first time. He’s convinced, though, that he’s being reasonable: Brown Eyes can use another stall.

Brown Eyes disagrees, to Derek’s bewilderment. He braces himself with a long-fingered hand on the edge of the stall and snipes back at Derek, claiming he was there first and that it’s absurd to cut in ahead of him.

“You’re not even undressed,” he says, shifting his position so he can continue blocking Derek’s path, but with both hands free again - one holding his shower gear in a sky blue caddy, the other hitching his towel back up on his hips. Derek jerks his eyes away. “Do you usually shower in sneakers?” Brown Eyes continues. He gives Derek the most scorchingly judgmental look he’s ever been on the receiving end of. “And you’re carrying _books_ , dude. I know midterms are close, but this is a bathroom, not a library." 

His mocking tone digs at Derek, makes him bite back. 

He loses this initial battle of wills, which grates at his pride as he retreats, needing to run to make it across campus in time for his favorite class, a fascinating study on the historical impact of war-time films. It’s a topic he’s often wished he had the time and space to discuss in detail with Mystery Guy. That reminder of the extreme limitations constraining their relationship sends him spiraling right back into anger at his latest target.

He’s got more stubbornness in his little finger than Brown Eyes has in his entire body. _His rather appealingly built body_ , his traitorous brain whispers, but Derek does his best to ignore it.

He fumes through the class, and sure enough, when he gets back to his dorm, the bathroom’s sharply scented with bleach and Pine-Sol, and there’s no message waiting for him.

Derek decides the entire thing is Brown Eyes’s fault.

And the worst part is, he’s _everywhere_  from that point on. Isn’t that always the way? he thinks. Now that he’s run into the guy once, it’s like he can’t _stop_  running into him. 

He apparently lives on Derek’s floor - Derek had briefly hoped he’d only been there to visit a friend, or maybe to hook up with someone, although he’d shied away from that thought, feeling weirdly uncomfortable about the notion. But no such luck. 

He pops up nearly every time Derek’s in the hall, grins annoyingly at him when they cross paths outside the building, creeps up behind him in line at the dining hall with opinions on his food choices. He even turns out to be in one of Derek’s classes, which feels like the ultimate insult. He plops cheerfully down into the seat next to him, tells Derek his name is Stiles, and explains that this class may seem like an odd choice, but it lines up with his criminology degree. He then _continues_  explaining, in infuriatingly fascinating detail, why he chose it and how he expects it to help him to be a more engaged, informed part of whatever community he eventually joins as a public servant.

He irritates Derek.

He irritates Derek so much that he starts responding, asking questions, trying to find reasons to dislike him.

He irritates Derek because his searches keep coming up empty, and he starts wanting to ask more questions because he enjoys the answers, because he likes watching the way Stiles’s hands move when he talks, the way those deep brown eyes sometimes seem to glow in excitement when Derek joins in.

Their exchanges stay heated, but more out of passionate shared interests than anger, Derek’s forced to admit (to himself, anyway) after the third time he’s tried to snap back at Stiles’s gap-filled logic, only to find himself in Stiles’s room an hour later, still eagerly debating the topic.

What’s worse is that it takes two solid weeks before he realizes he hasn’t been waking up early to leave messages for Mystery Guy.

He waits for the wave of panic to strike, expecting to feel overwhelming guilt and anxiety over losing contact with the most interesting person in his life.

The wave doesn’t come, and Derek rolls over in bed, pressing the side of his face deeper into his pillow, staring at the wall, and thinking about Stiles. Stiles, his heart says quietly, is intriguing to a degree Mystery Guy had never quite achieved. Stiles is sharply funny, with endless thoughts and arguments that keep Derek reeling and intrigued.

Part of the reason it’d taken this long to remember the tile conversations is that Derek hasn’t been as careful about sticking to his regular shower stall. His schedule’s been thrown totally awry, aligning with Stiles’s as much as possible, since they spend so much time arguing, or watching movies together so they can actively debate the films’ merits, or eating meals together so they can bounce ideas off each other between classes. 

And, as the weeks wear on, the conversations often stretch out so long that they end up in the bathroom together, Derek brushing his teeth while Stiles showers, or, more and more often, with the two of them showering in neighboring stalls, talking over the water.

This brings up new difficulties for Derek, who has to begin figuring out how to deal with the fact that he can _hear_  Stiles in there - the water sluicing against his skin, the slick squelch of the soap, the sound of Stiles’s hands rubbing against his firmly muscled body.

When he can’t bear it any longer, he ducks his head under the spray of his shower head, trying to drown out the worst of the noises, trying his best not to picture it. This is his friend, he reminds himself. Stiles is important to him, and he doesn’t want to do anything to screw this up.

From the beginning, Stiles has talked in vague terms about someone else he’s interested in. There’s a softness in his voice when he mentions the guy, a smile that plays across his lips, a distant, affectionate expression that made Derek’s heart ache long before he understood why.

Lately, though, it’s been sounding like the relationship hasn’t entirely worked out, like there might’ve been a disappointment there. Derek knows a good friend would be sympathetic, would hope that the guy swings back around, realizing what an idiot he’s been to let go of someone like Stiles. He’s a shitty person, probably, because it gives him hope, instead. Stupid, improbable hope that he clings to anyway.

***

One afternoon, as they’re showering together-but-not-together, Derek says something that Stiles finds particularly cuttingly funny. He can tell, from the way Stiles laughs, that he’s throwing his head back, putting his entire body into his enjoyment of Derek’s words. He lets himself grin, lets himself feel good about it.

"Wait, hang on, hang on, I can’t forget that one,” Stiles says, and there’s a jostling noise on his side, clattering sounds accompanied by some loud cursing. 

“Do you need rescuing?” Derek calls out. He shivers under the hot water at his own daring, at the thought of what would happen if Stiles took him up on the offer, if he pulled open his curtain, then Stiles’s, and joined him in a stall that’s too small for two bodies, unless they’re pressed close together, skin to skin. 

Stiles thumps a limb against the wall in response. “Fuck,” he says, his voice sounding a little odd, his laugh far more awkward than it’d been moments earlier. “Ha ha no, I just…I completely forgot to bring my crayon with me this time." 

Derek pauses while turning the water off, jumps and swears when the temperature goes suddenly, bracingly cold. He twists the handle the rest of the way and asks Stiles to repeat the last thing he’d said.

Stiles sounds slightly embarrassed now. "I guess you don’t know this about me yet; it’s crazy, isn’t it, with how much we talk? I forget I haven’t known you forever.” He hesitates, seeming to be taking the time to shape the rest of the words before letting them come out. “My thoughts always rattle around so much, I sometimes need to write things down so I don’t forget. I actually used to-” He stops again, as if deciding whether he can trust Derek with this, but they’ve come a long way. 

They trust each other, Derek thinks, pressing his hand against the wall separating them, as though Stiles can sense it, can feel the depth of his respect for and interest in anything Stiles wants to tell him. 

And maybe he does, because he continues. “That guy I tell you about sometimes? The one who stopped talking to me a couple months ago. This is where we used to talk. Kinda like we do now, I guess, but…in writing. It’s…really stupid, I guess, but I miss him. I don’t know what I did, but I must’ve scared him off.”

Derek pulls his towel from its hook and wipes himself down. He hears Stiles doing the same on his own side. When they get out, they move automatically - this is Derek’s new routine now, he realizes - to the sinks, where Stiles pulls out his toothpaste and quirks a grin at Derek.

There’s an initial awkwardness in his expression, a recognition that he’s said things he can’t take back, but he makes his usual weird faces in the mirror while brushing, and Derek can’t stop watching him.

“When did the guy stop writing back?” he asks, holding his own forgotten toothbrush in his hand. 

Stiles spits. He thinks for a moment. "Around the time you and I started getting breakfast together, weirdly enough.“ He scratches his nose, smearing toothpaste on it without noticing. 

"Remember when we met?” Derek asks him, and Stiles grins. 

“You were such an asshole,” Stiles says fondly, with no small dose of affection in his voice. 

“I stopped showering in that stall because my whole schedule changed when I got to know you,” Derek says. 

Stiles doesn’t get it at first; that’s fair, it’d taken Derek far longer to catch on than it should have. It all seems so obvious now.

“You didn’t drive anyone away,” he tells him, angling his body towards Stiles so he can meet his gaze, can look into those dark brown eyes and put as much meaning behind his words as he can manage. “Trust me, you haven’t done anything wrong. I didn’t know it was you, or I would’ve said something earlier. I’m sorry I stopped writing back - it’s just that you’re even more fascinating in person. It’s hard not to get distracted, when there’s a chance to talk to you in real time, without spending every night wishing I could hear from you again." 

Stiles’s mouth still has some toothpaste in it, Derek discovers, but he doesn’t mind much. 

The other guys who troop into the bathroom later - a few minutes? half an hour? Derek’s not keeping track - do mind, but Stiles just flips them off. 

"Fuck off; he’s my Shower Boyfriend,” Stiles says, sending a particularly obscene gesture Whittemore’s way, and Derek laughs into Stiles’s throat, his hair still dripping wet, but his heart light, buoyant with unexpected happiness.

***

Years later, when their jobs periodically keep them on different schedules, they return to old habits, leaving love notes for each other on their bathroom’s tiled wall.

They still argue - over any number of things; it’s an ingrained part of their relationship, and one neither of them wants to give up - but often about who has to clean the bathroom. 

Stiles claims he wants to keep all the messages intact, because he’s a hopeless romantic who likes remembering the early stages of their relationship. 

Derek counters that hopelessly _messy_  would be a more accurate description, and was he _also_  being romantic when Derek found a stash of his dirty socks under the bed last week? 

The nice thing about life now versus those early days is that the arguments nearly always end in kissing. It’s a pretty good routine, Derek thinks. It’s probably his favorite yet.

Then, one day, Derek rolls tiredly out of bed, rubs his eyes blearily while the shower heats, and takes a minute before focusing on the tiles. 

Stiles has been on the early shift at the station for the past week, so he’s been leaving morning messages for Derek. Sometimes it’s poetry, or quotes, a few lines from something Stiles has been reading and thinks Derek would appreciate. Sometimes they’re filthy promises that’re meant to make Derek miss Stiles for the rest of the day, welcoming him with open arms and biting kisses when he returns. 

Sometimes it’s a random thought that had struck Stiles in the shower, or in the middle of the night - he’d learned early in their relationship that Derek actively Does Not Appreciate being shaken awake to discuss these late-night musings. He’d brought home a notebook the day after they’d had _that_  fight, handing it over as part of an apology. He loved hearing Stiles’s thoughts, he clarified - always had, always would - but he preferred to have those conversations when he was actually fucking awake enough to deal with them.

“I can’t believe you voluntarily got up early every day to talk to me,” Stiles had said, kissing him and then filling the first page with a large, scrawled out, _Remember Derek’s a serious jackass before he’s had coffee._

Yesterday’s message had been typically Stiles: a note for Derek to remind him he wanted to look up photos of geese with teeth, to win an argument he’d been having with Scott, his former long-suffering roommate and still remarkably patient best friend.

Derek’s expecting something along those lines today. But it’s different this time, a simple, single line, written in alternating orange and blue.

_You + me = Shower Husbands? Y/N_

Derek doesn’t hesitate before circling the _Y_. 

When he gets out of the shower, Stiles is waiting on the other side of the bathroom door, out of uniform and holding a ring. He looks nervous, which Derek thinks is ridiculous. 

He tells him so. That conversation takes some time. He calls out of work so they’ll have the space to explore it properly, and thoroughly. 

***

They let that message stay on the tiles for a while. 

It makes Derek smile every morning. But then again, so does Stiles.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/paintedrecs).


End file.
